Once you have lived with mountains, Under the benedictory pines And deodars, near stars And a brighter moon, With wood smoke and mist, Sweet smell of grass, dew lines On spider-spun, sun-kissed Buttercup and vine; Once you have lived with these, Blessed, God’s favourite then, You will return, You will come back TO touch the trees and gfass, And climb once more the windswept mountain pass. ‘ ….. You can make tunnels and roads and bridges; but no matter how hard they try, humans cannot actually get rid of the mountains. That’s what I like about them; they I are here to stay.’ The Dehra region, mountains and all, i holds Ruskin Bond captive, and he in turn passes on this fascination to his reader. And when he leads the reader to the characters living there, the stories lurking behind the hills, stones, rivers and animals, one empathizes ‘with this fascination.
February 2007, volume 31, No 2